sobering reality

I sobered up not so much because I feared I would die, but because I knew I wouldn’t. It was the thought of day after day continuing the same that frightened me most. Imagining numbness that was never going to end. Hearing the incessant “shoulda, coulda, woulda” in my head, or worse, coming out of my mouth. I wonder if the exagerrated stories and actions that pervade our culture today aren’t indicative of this same fear. Being unremarkable, being ordinary, becomes the greatest terrorist, threatening us in ways more complete than any outside force. I listen to the stories of the “recovered”. It is not that I doubt the reality of car crashes, nights in jail, countless, nameless and faceless sex partners, drugs and danger. But the retelling of the events, like fish stories, makes them larger. Why? To make the survival bigger? James Frey writes “A Million Little Pieces” because it sells much better than “A Million Days of Nothing”. And the truth is that it is the latter that addiction, in all its insidious forms, produces.

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